Our Team

Nimi Idnani, Proprietor

Nimi Idnani is thrilled to finally be pursuing her dream full-time. She has spent the last three years studying wine through the Wine & Spirits Education Trust (WSET), a British organization that is considered the benchmark for wine studies, and hopes to eventually pursue a Master of Wines (MW). Nimi previously worked in Corporate Recruitment, most recently at Rite-Hire Advisory, where she spent three years working closely with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to build out their Advanced Risk & Compliance Analytics group. She graduated from Cornell University in 2009 with a B.A. in Government and Asian Studies (and also took an Introduction to Wines class her senior year that changed her life.)

Rush Patel, Proprietor

Jeremy Glover, Executive Chef

Jeremy has always known that he wanted to cook. He developed his craft by attending culinary school, working in various types of restaurants and seeking out opportunities to Stage at restaurants purely to learn. He has worked at Pesce Blue, Cava, and Demeter’s Steakhouse, all of Portsmouth, NH. He spent a short time at a French restaurant, Café Campagne, in Seattle, WA. For the past few years, Jeremy worked at Ceia Kitchen and Bar in Newburyport, MA. He took a short hiatus from Ceia to be the executive chef at a Cloudland Farm, a farm to table restaurant in Vermont. Shortly after returning to Ceia, he was promoted to executive chef. Jeremy had many wonderful experiences while working at Ceia, including cooking Thanksgiving dinner at the James Beard House in 2015. Throughout his career, Jeremy has been fortunate to work with chefs that have inspired and nurtured his own culinary interests. He is particularly fond of whole animal butchery and utilizing all the parts. He enjoys using local product as often as possible and believes in a changing menu that celebrates the current season. Jeremy is excited to be back in Portsmouth and to be a part of a new venture.

Frieda Kat, Bar Manager

Frieda has been working in and out of restaurants for 15 years. She has always enjoyed the thrill of how each day is different in hospitality. She had the opportunity to work with the best during her 9 years in NYC, learning a whole new level of spontaneity, creativity and hospitality there. Frieda was part of the opening team at Will Guidara and Chef Daniel Humm’s new project, The Nomad. There, she learned a wealth of wine and food knowledge. After leaving the Nomad, she bounced between a few small excellent bars (notably, Fort Defiance) in Brooklyn before deciding to spend more time on her photography work and wine education, which lead her to Dry Dock Wines in Red Hook, Brooklyn, a great locally owned wine shop. At Dry Dock, she learned about the distribution of wines as well as how to sell wine. In June 2017, she left Brooklyn and returned to Portsmouth with her husband and now 1 year old, Stellan. Frieda found Raleigh and felt it was a great fit, a place where she could impart her knowledge and of course, keep learning.

Kamil McMullen, Beer Specialist

Kamil has 18 years of experience in the restaurant industry, from large entertainment establishments to intimate restaurants and everything in between. His beer obsession began in 2009 at the Lord Hobo in Cambridge, MA and continued to the Five Horses Tavern in Somerville, MA, two well-known craft beer destinations. After moving to New Hampshire in 2016, Kamil managed the Epoch Restaurant at the Exeter Inn until August of 2017, and took over the beer program at Raleigh in September of the same year. Kamil wants the beer program at Raleigh to be high quality, varied in style, and consistently rotating, with as much of a New England focus as possible.